Only two women, both from Congress, from the three parties that constitute the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) were sworn in as Cabinet Ministers on Monday. The Nationalist Congress Party’s Aditi Tatkare was sworn in as Minister of State. In terms of regional representation, while western Maharashtra got the largest share, Marathwada and Vidarbha did not fare poorly either. Mumbai too has five Ministers now but Konkan remained the least represented, with just two. There are four Muslim Ministers in the MVA cabinet.
Between the three parties, there are several senior women leaders including Shiv Sena’s Neelam Gorhe, Manisha Kayande, Congress’s Praniti Shinde, and the NCP’s Ms. Tatkare. While Ms. Tatkare, daughter of senior NCP leader Sunil Tatkare, made it to Uddhav Thackeray’s extended Cabinet, she had to settle for Minister of State.
The two women ministers from the Congress are Yashomati Thakur, MLA from Tivasa in Amravati district and Varsha Gaikwad, MLA from Dharavi. Ms. Gaikwad is the daughter of Mumbai Congress chief Eknath Gaikwad and has been representing Dharavi for four terms. Ms. Thakur, a three-term MLA, was in the news earlier this year after a video showed her hurling abuses at government officials.
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In terms of regional representation, western Maharashtra has eight representatives in the Cabinet, including Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar. This is followed by Marathwada (7) and Vidarbha (7). Interestingly, Mumbai has five Cabinet ministers, including Aaditya Thackeray, Ms. Gaikwad, Aslam Shaikh, Nawab Malik and Jitendra Awhad (Thane).
Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has kept the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections in 2022 in mind while allotting these as the BJP has already started the ground work for the elections and will try to wrest the corporation from the Sena.
The other regions seem to have got a raw deal in the Cabinet expansion. North Maharashtra has five ministers while Konkan has just two. Apart from these, there are two MLCs. The Konkan Ministers include Uday Samant from Ratnagiri and Ms. Tatkare from Shrivardhan.
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Satyajeet Chavhan, who belongs to Rajapur in Konkan and is a member of the Konkan Shakti Mahasangh that fought against the Nanar project, said, “Western Maharashtra always overshadows Konkan, especially Mumbai. Even though we are happy with Uday Samant becoming minister, it is not adequate. We expect the Shiv Sena, which fought to scrap the Nanar project, to give us better representation. At least the Tourism and Environment portfolios should go to a Konkan representative to ensure our region gets a boost when it comes to tourism while preserving its precious environment.”